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Here you'll find info about artists, rumors, camping tips, and the infamous Roo Clues. Have a look around then create an account and join in the fun. See you at Bonnaroo!!
I saw Fall Out Boy tonight and while they were good, I'm convinced that 75% of all/most of their songs were prerecorded backing tracks with some live playing acting as a parsley garnish on their musical plate, so to speak.
I was close to the action for the couple of songs they played on the b-stages at the back of the arena, and it sure didn't look like what they were playing matched the sound I was hearing. In fact, I could hear the unamplified live drumming and it didn't match what I was hearing through the PA.
On top of that, it was the worst sound mix I've heard at an indoor show, arena or otherwise, in years. They had way too few speakers hanging from the rafters, and they were overtaxing the capabilities of the PA. Call me a "Hey you kids, get off my lawn" old fart, but live music sounded much better when bands and venues used those old school bigger, square analog speakers, which started disappearing in the late 90's - 2000-ish, if memory serves.
Post by Dale Cooper on Oct 30, 2017 10:46:05 GMT -5
First time seeing Bon Iver that was not in a giant field on a Sunday at Bonnaroo, so fantastic. The Ryman sounded perfect. My biggest complaint was the 90 min show time. I wish it were longer. But whew, worth every penny.
Songhoy Blues: This show was kind of a weird experience. The crowd was super into it, but Seattle crowds get fucking silent in between songs at pretty much every show I've been to the past 2 months. Now, sure, I've only been to 7 shows, but that seems like a reasonable litmus test to me. It's not often I'm at a show where the lead singer speaks the best English of anyone in the band and even still mostly no one can understand what he's saying in between songs. He made a comment at one point though which I've expressed many a time and couldn't agree with more. I don't want to misquote, so he essentially said that people keep asking him what they lyrics are about and he said that it doesn't matter. You enjoy the feeling and the movement of the music and we love giving you that feeling so that's all that is really important. Besides that, the jamming was kind of droning and not very exploratory and the crowd gave me that feeling you get when you're one of the most sober people in your area and you're convinced that EVERYONE around you is some variation of super-high. Not since I worked Joe Russo's Almost Dead at The Ryman almost a year ago have I had that feeling.
tl;dr I prefer their recorded material and I can't remember the last time I smoked pot.
Down North: This is the band who opened for Songhoy Blues and it was a shit-load of fun. The lead singer was a bigger dude rocking a Prince t-shirt and skin-tight pink pants doing work on that microphone stand like it wasn't 2017. Their drummer was an enormous goof making faces at the guitarist and his drum set the whole time, had glowing sticks and those neon/light-up shoes that made a crazy effect behind the bass drum in the smoke machine. It was dancey and I would highly recommend it.
Key notes: This band did a funk cover of The Beatles' Come Together, a song about losing a loved one and domestic violence, and explained dancing to ~150 lit white people all in the same set.
Wand: Other than the one early-morning, absentminded listen of their new album a couple weeks ago (or whatever) I hadn't listened to Wand in almost exactly 2 years. When Golem came out I listened to it what felt like all the time, even though in retrospect it was probably only about 5 times. Based on this (probably misguided) feeling that I'd been longing to see them, their set at the Vera Project did not disappoint. They started the show off with a freight train of heavy. They let us know where we were going right off the bat. After that, the lead singer and drummer played around off each other in between songs with the sounds of disjointed, non-rhythmic drum/guitar collaboration that worked both as transition and aural collapse. There were the light parts of the set and parts that were intense, but it was never over-whelming. It was a solid rock set with a lot of love in it.
tl;dr Wand explained: When the audio tech came over the monitors after a song to say they were done, the band said, "Alright. Well, goodnight!" and then the lead singer looked around for about 25 seconds and came back out, said, "Fuck it," and played for another 15 minutes.
Flying Lotus put on a pretty great show. However it was only an hour long which is way too short for FlyLo. It also kind of bugged me because I had to wait through two hours of openers that were really not that good. I got there when the doors opened at 7, the show started at 8, Flying Lotus came on at 10 and ended at 11. Everyone was also expecting an encore which didn't happen. I'd still recommend going because it is an amazing show...just don't get there so early like I did.
Flying Lotus put on a pretty great show. However it was only an hour long which is way too short for FlyLo. It also kind of bugged me because I had to wait through two hours of openers that were really not that good. I got there when the doors opened at 7, the show started at 8, Flying Lotus came on at 10 and ended at 11. Everyone was also expecting an encore which didn't happen. I'd still recommend going because it is an amazing show...just don't get there so early like I did.
Thanks for the info. Got tickets for next week and will take my time.
I saw Fall Out Boy tonight and while they were good, I'm convinced that 75% of all/most of their songs were prerecorded backing tracks with some live playing acting as a parsley garnish on their musical plate, so to speak.
I was close to the action for the couple of songs they played on the b-stages at the back of the arena, and it sure didn't look like what they were playing matched the sound I was hearing. In fact, I could hear the unamplified live drumming and it didn't match what I was hearing through the PA.
On top of that, it was the worst sound mix I've heard at an indoor show, arena or otherwise, in years. They had way too few speakers hanging from the rafters, and they were overtaxing the capabilities of the PA. Call me a "Hey you kids, get off my lawn" old fart, but live music sounded much better when bands and venues used those old school bigger, square analog speakers, which started disappearing in the late 90's - 2000-ish, if memory serves.
Post by Dale Cooper on Nov 13, 2017 10:33:40 GMT -5
So Flying Lotus was reliably good but the entire concert was a weird vibe.
Super technical difficulties pushed the show back. On recommendations to come late, we got to the venue at 9:45 and STILL saw entire performances by two openers before FlyLo started at 11.
The technical difficulties persisted throughout the first half of the show. FlyLo eventually had to turn his mic off due to feedback. We were right by the soundboard, and the soundboard guy started arguing back with FlyLo when FlyLo complained. It was embarrassing and a total momentum killer.
Also of note is that there's no way the Madison Theatre didn't oversell the show. It was shoulder to shoulder throughout the entire place. Had to be at least 200 too many people inside, which led to a lot of dealing with intoxicated assholes.
So, all in all, a disappointing environment...which is a shame because the music was great and the visuals were very cool. I'm just sad that what could have been one of my top shows of the year turned out to be a let down due to a lot of things outside of mine (or FlyLo's?) control.
Primus. Better than ever. Good running into Sarge. Daughter said they loved Noname last night as well.
bummed i had to miss for KC but it was the right choice.
Funny that you mention it. I kept thinking how KC it was for the 20teens. You definitely made the right choice though. I've been waiting for that review for a couple weeks. Setlist from last night was:
Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweakers (one was standing next to me later in the show)
bummed i had to miss for KC but it was the right choice.
Funny that you mention it. I kept thinking how KC it was for the 20teens. You definitely made the right choice though. I've been waiting for that review for a couple weeks. Setlist from last night was:
Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweakers (one was standing next to me later in the show)
Post by Dale Cooper on Nov 15, 2017 23:02:17 GMT -5
Lady Gaga was really good. I wish she played more from Artpop rather than Joanne but thats the tour. Loved her stage setup to give audience members a good seat. People lost their mindswhen she played piano at the back of general admission,
Her voice sounded awesome and she gave 100%. Plus she was very human and interactive audience. It doesnt beat Bon Iver from a few weeks ago but great show.
Yeah Dale, it was an integrated show. That was particularly evident in the set they played the new album because the visuals went along with the story. It’s not like you’re going to sit around and listen to that album every day because it’s so eclectic. It’s killer, and I’m not taking away anything from it. But with the show, it was pretty great. About to head out to see a one off Break Science show. I have tomorrow off, so I’m looking to get down a bit tonight.
FlyLo 3D was very good but to those considering seeing him on this tour, be advised he's only playing an hourlong set (idk if that's typical for him or not)
Very great one off Break Science show last night. We got to hang with Adam outside the venue and went up and dapped off Borahm after the show. They brought out Khris Royal and Russ Liquid and some other Brass player I didn’t know. Fun, fun, fun. I am so gd hungover it’s unbelievable. I think the Makers and Sodas were triples. Damn. I haven’t kicked my own ass like this in a long, long time.
And I forgot to add that Brandon Butler (Pretty Lights) came out and played keys with Borahm on the same keyboards. Ducking awesome.
If you're in NYC, Philadelphia, or Washington, DC and enjoy jangling powerpop, garage rock,and the Paisley Underground sound, catch indie rock supergroup Eyelids in the next few days. Fronted by The Decemberists' drummer John Moen and former Guided By Voices bassist Chris Slusarenko, they're flagbearers for a type of rock and roll that you don't hear much anymore (Other band members have played with Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, The Minus 5, and Elliott Smith). I saw them in the Boston area last night and they do what they do to near-perfection. It's not going to change your life, but catching them when they play your area is a must if you like this sort of thing.
Drive-By Truckers keyboardist Jay Gonzalez opens with his band, Jay Gonzalez and the Guilty Pleasures. They're closer to Eyelids in sound than DBT.
See them this weekend here:
Fri 11/17 - Bell House, Brooklyn, NY Sat 11/18 - Kung Fu Necktie, Philadelphia, PA Sun 11/19 - Black Cat, Washington, DC
Last Edit: Nov 17, 2017 9:13:54 GMT -5 by tw12 - Back to Top
Was worried the new St. Vincent solo setup wasn't going to work but that was the best I've seen her live. Really wish there were official recordings of the new arrangements for the old songs.
Flintstone Reports: Last 40 Days in the Live Music Capital of the World
As some of you might know, I recently moved out of NYC after spending the last five years of my life. Before I left, one of my main goals was to do the thing I like the most; watching as many live performances as possible. Since most of my friends don’t appreciate this hobby of mine as much as I (and some of y’all) do, I wanted to write here about those performances I’ve seen over the last 40 days in NYC. IMO, it’s also a good way for me to remember these days.
The moment I learned that October 31 was gonna be my last day at school, one of the first things I did was to open all the websites I frequently check for the upcoming concerts and make a list of the artists/bands I wanted to see. I had already purchased tickets for some concerts in advance, including FlyLo’s 3D show on November 6, so my deadline was basically that. I also didn’t wanna miss Susanne Sundfør (her latest was my AOTM for September) on Nov 7, so I purchased my flight ticket to home for the 8th. Then, I basically went crazy (quack savings!) and splurged on a lot of concerts.
When I look at the list of the performances I’ve seen from my concert archives page, majority of those falls under the category of electronic & experimental music (~70%, or 39/56). This would seem VERY weird for 2012 Fred since he wouldn’t think he could appreciate this type of music at all. Even 2016 Fred might have judged it, honestly. But with time, my tastes have changed and I’ve been increasingly challenging myself to try new genres and experimental sounds. (My latest challenge has been free music, and I’m currently working on it with tips and encouragements of GL & Dr. Snowman.) I think I’m on my way to a point where I’ll hopefully soon have some appreciation for most genres. Anywho, enough about me and the evolution of my tastes, and more about the aforementioned performances.
I’ve seen 56 performances (though there are some repeats, 3 x Nicolas Jaar, & 2 x JDH & Dave P), and it will probably take a lot of time to write about all of them, but I’m gonna try to mention as many of them as possible, and will finish the post with a Top 10 list.
My marathon kicked off on the last day of September with a free show at Knitting Factory, as part of “Taste of Iceland: Reykjavik Calling”. Two Icelandic bands were present, Fufanu and Mammút. The latter has released their English debut Kinder Versions earlier in the year, and it has been one of my favorite albums, and therefore I wanted to see them if they could pull it off live. Since it was their first NYC show, they were very excited and I could tell that they were trying their best to make an impressive debut. Which I think they did, as the vocals were very powerful and she sounded exactly like I had imagined (serious Björk vibes!). They haven’t toured the US properly yet, but when they do, I’d strongly recommend you go and see them. Following their performance, I rushed to Good Room to catch Blondes’ live show. I can’t exactly put the reason in the words, but if an electronic act is performing in a live setting, I generally seem to enjoy those shows more than DJ sets. Not always though (more on that later). Anyway, Blondes’ 1-hour show was very dark, fantastic, and super-entertaining. I hope fests like FYF book them more frequently next year. I don’t think Moscoman could follow that energized set, or maybe I was so tired I didn’t feel it.
I didn’t have any other show until the first weekend of October, where on Oct 6, I watched a very stacked show with Yves Tumor, Lorenzo Senni and more. Yves Tumor’s performance was kinda nuts, he basically screamed some lyrics (which of course I didn’t even try to understand haha) with some cool beats in the background. Lorenzo Senni’s show was apparently live, but I didn’t feel it. Tzusing closed the night with a DJ set, it didn’t turn out as I expected and I left after a while. The next day was the second time of ‘two-show-a-night’ concept; I first went to Music Hall of Williamsburg to see Hundred Waters (cc. Rummy 500 ). The last I saw them was at Pitchfork Fest ’14, and I couldn’t somehow catch them after. I like their second album a lot, so it was wonderful to hear those songs live. I like the performance of the openers Kelsey Lu and Lafawndah as well, and will try to listen to their releases soon. After, I quickly walked to Good Room (stopping by somewhere on my way there to buy some energy drink or coffee) for The Bunker show with live sets from Vril and Halal & Relaxer, and DJ sets from Patrick Russell and Dr. Rubinstein. As expected, all those sets were fantastic, but Halal & Relaxer set was the winner IMO.
For the next weekend, I reached to a point where I tried to go to 5 different venues in two nights, and that was the point my body told me ‘what the quack, Fred!’. I wasn’t originally planning to go to three shows in a row on Friday night, but I figured the first show was an early one; the last one was very late, so why couldn’t I squeeze another show in between? I wasn’t sure at all, but after this GL post, I accepted the challenge:
How long did it last? They're playing here tomorrow night, but I have two concerts in a row, and was wondering if I can just squeeze them in between.
You’re not gonna be able to do that, I don’t think. Show was at 9 and over after Midnight. Next tour.
The order was as follows: 1) See Everything Everything in a lame LN venue in Manhattan, don’t wait for the encore, 2) Rush to Brooklyn to a very cool industrial venue to catch Wolves In the Throne Room (of course had to skip the opening act), and finally 3) Run to Good Room to see Leon Vynehall. As you can imagine, I didn’t have much energy left by the end of the night, but I manage to stay at least for an hour trying to get into LV’s set. I failed to do so though, and I don’t know if I’m gonna give him another chance. Maybe if he plays live. On the other hand, WITTR was awesome and quite dark. Their stage setup was cool, too. I must admit that Everything Everything did not meet my (probably very high) expectations. Maybe it was because in a venue I’m not fond of, maybe because I listened to them beforehand so many times that I was expecting unrealistic levels of perfectness, or just because there was something wrong with their audio mixing, something was missing from their set. It wasn’t bad at all, but just wasn’t good enough. I hope to see them once again in the future. Next night had two concerts, both of which were part of Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival. The first was Hieroglyphic Being with Marshall Allen and Danny Ray Thompson. As I expressed my opinions in another thread, it was a combination of some beats by HB and lots of free jazz by Sun Ra people. It was interesting, and kept me intrigued for a while, but I was lost after a while. I was also getting sick after pushing myself so hard, but in the end it didn’t even matter as I headed to MHOW to see Bicep’s highly anticipated live set. Again, I think I’m more of a techno (especially dark techno if that means anything) person than house music; although I liked some parts of their set, overall I couldn’t get into the set to be honest. Maybe, the fact that I was getting a cold might have led me to think that way. I told myself, after that night, that I wasn’t gonna do multiple concerts a night thing for a long while, but I didn’t know then that ‘a long while’ meant only two weeks.
In those two weeks, I watched Nicolas Jaar (three times, all with different openers, including Amnesia Scanner and Actress live shows [both fantastic]), Wolf Parade, and Hauschka. I watched the first Nico show by myself, and enjoyed a lot, and decided to snag a last minute ticket for the second show to watch it with some friends. The third one was a total surprise. As soon as I saw the announcement for the surprise shows, I rushed to the website to buy tickets for the ambient one, where he was gonna perform his new album for the first time, but I was too late. I briefly hesitated to buy ticket for the noise show, but then I slapped myself and got my ticket. That show turned out exactly how I imagined it’d be: An improv noise set. There weren’t any structure, and it was mostly free music in a 200-person capacity room, completely in dark. There were few extra amplifiers placed in different parts of the room, making the performance sound like 3D. The other shows, Wolf Parade and Hauschka, were both quite enjoyable. I wasn’t aware that Wolf Parade had such dedicated fans, as most people around me knew almost all the lyrics. Hauschka’s show had an entirely different mood, where everyone was seated while he performed songs from his latest album without any breaks between songs. The opener Paul de Jong was also an artist I’ve never seen or heard before, and it was a really fun and warm set IMO.
I closed October with two consecutive nights of two-shows-a-night-and-try-not-to-get-sick-at-the-same-time routine. First night was Jacques into La Femme, followed by Mosaic by Maceo Plex Halloween event. It was my second time of seeing La Femme after their mind-blowing set few years ago at now closed Glasslands Gallery (RIP). They performed for almost 90 minutes, and it was crazy as I expected. I think they are big in France nowadays; they might be festival darlings at US festivals soon. Mosaic event, however, was a bit disappointing for me. But I didn’t have high expectations to begin with, so it’s fine. The event was in some warehouse in southern part of Brooklyn, consisted of two rooms, where in the smaller one I saw Rebolledo, Paranoid London (live) and Prins Thomas, and in the bigger one, Jennifer Cardini and Maceo Plex. Of those five sets, I can say that Paranoid London’s live set was the most entertaining one. I wanted to catch them at FYF earlier in the year, but couldn’t, so I was happy to do so here. The other set I liked a lot was Jennifer Cardini, if you haven’t seen her, give it a chance when you can. Maceo Plex, on the other hand, didn’t play as I hoped he would, so I decided to leave early. Seeing 5 sets for $30 in a well-run (but quite empty, at some point Prins Thomas were playing for less than 10 people) production was a win though. The second night’s first show was Protomartyr. I’m not gonna talk about their performance as I think a good portion of you watched them and know how good they are. Once again, they kicked ass. Go and see them. The following show was at Brooklyn Bazaar, where Sure Thing & Cultivated Sound celebrated their third year with a kick-ass lineup. It was a techno night, and I danced all night long with sets from Ne/Re/A, Isabella (live), and Broken English Club (live). It was a perfect way to end October.
My last week in NYC was a blast. On Nov 1, I watched Hamilton Leithauser one more time (my third time overall), and the next day was the first night of Swans’ final performances (they played for 2 and a half hours! And needless to say, it was great). Between Nov 3 and 5, all I did was to consume alcohol and to get drunk (my poor liver) with my close friends. And the last two nights were Flying Lotus’ 3D show (which I missed at FYF thanks to @jonesjupiter ) and Susanne Sundfør (mind-blowing performance). Wouldn’t think of a better way to say farewell to NYC.
Finally, here is my Top 10:
10. Nicolas Jaar 9. Mammút 8. Flying Lotus 7. Broken English Club 6. Halal & Relaxer 5. Blondes 4. Hauschka 3. Hundred Waters 2. Susanne Sundfør 1. Swans
Well, it’s not like I’m not going to any shows in Istanbul. Next week I’m seeing Liars, in January I’ll be catching one of the last shows of Wild Beasts, and in mid-December I’m going to a music festival (although the lineup is nowhere near DfN) where I’ll have a chance to catch a lot of local artists and some few international artists (one of them was gonna be Fatboy Slim but he cancelled today ).
In short, life is good and I’m so thankful that I am lucky enough to see all these shows and get to share it with you. To quote myself:
Sounds like you didn't enjoy half of it. Was that mostly from exhaustion or because you were trying new things that you normally don't listen to? I think if I lived in a big city and had money I would probably go to so many shows that I would die. We already do a lot, considering we have to drive 2 hr. most of the time.